Truk: Difference between revisions

The archipelago is believed to have been settled by Polynesian peoples since at least 600 BCE, with cave pictograms and tool remnants being recovered pointing to that period. The ancestors of the people of Truk might have been stragglers left behind from those that went to [[Vallos]] or simply a community that saw the islands as fit to settle on. The name of the pre-islamic civilization of Truk is extrapolated from engravings in pottery as the Karo. Early Karo peoples survived from fishing, gathering mussels on the shore and picking fruit; game was very rare limited only to small birds and rodents. Over time the Karo of Sinta and Anako sailed east and spread to the other islands of the archipelago, such that Karo settlement spanned all of the islands. Discovery of stone foundations and burial sites allow archeologists to estimate the existence of at least sixteen different sites that could have been habitated in this early period. The emergence of the Dalam kingdom on the island of Parapo can be traced back to the second century and lasted into the 9th century, asserting its control over all of Truk as is attested by large stone steles on each island declaring the glories of the rule of King Pokok(believed to have been between the years of 327 to 355). It is under the Dalam kingdom that the settlement that became Imarli was founded, it was not however the capital or even an important settlement until after the kingdom had been destroyed. All references of Dalam and its kings abruptly stop in the year 907. It is theorized that either an invasion by other polynesians, a catastrophic hurricane or disease nearly wiped out the people of Truk; at the very least the political and societal structures of Dalam were entirely demolished. Fragments of oral tradition call the following years as ''the Jaws of Hunger'', a two hundred year period of extreme deprivation and inter-communal violence.